In search of the therapeutic law : an address to the members of the Northern Homœopathic Medical Association, at the Half-yearly Meeting in Hull, May 8th, 1868 / by John Ryan.

  • Ryan, John (of Sheffield)
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: In search of the therapeutic law : an address to the members of the Northern Homœopathic Medical Association, at the Half-yearly Meeting in Hull, May 8th, 1868 / by John Ryan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    sequence, have been accused of a contempt for pathology; the accusation, however, is most unjust. Nor should the pathological knowledge of Hahnemann, as revealed in his writings, be measured by the standard of to-day: he is acknowledged, even by his enemies, to have been a highly educated and accomplished physician; but, as pathology has made its greatest progress within the last few years, Hahnemann—equal to his medical brethren of the time— can no more be expected to have possessed the correct and more advanced pathological views of to-day, than Hufeland, his personal friend, and sometime doctrinal opponent. Nor should the importance which he attached to the study of actions and symptoms, in the living body, be urged as a proof that he despised pathology. The followers of Hahnemann are most anxious that morbid anatomy shall not supersede the study of disease, in the body, 6ut vivens9 as Stahl has it; yet they acknow- ledge the full value of pathological research, in the dis- crimination of the seats and terminations of diseases. Dr. John Brown, the learned librarian of the Edinburgh College of Physicians, deals with the question of the necessity of studying disease through its symptoms, in the living body, in the following apposite remarks :—“ Medi- cine has more to do with human Dynamics, than Statics; for, whatever be the esssence of life—and as yet this ti Qeiov, this nescio quid divinum has defied all scrutiny— it is made known to us chiefly by certain activities or changes. It is the tendency, at the present time, to reverse this order. Morbid anatomy and microscopic investigations, though not confined to states and con- ditions of parts, must regard them fully more than actions and functions. This is probably what Stahl means, when he says, f Ubi Physicus desinit, Medicus incepit999 A little further on, Dr. Brown adds, quaintly: “ The human machine has been compared to a watch, and some hope that, in due time, doctors will be as good at their craft, as